How it opens
Your sister Madeline was the elder and the wiser, and the valley had settled which of you it belonged to.
The house was your uncle's, Rowland Lester, squire of Grassdale, a just man with a short way of speaking and a long memory.
Rowland LesterA man who leaves is a man who left, Walter. The farm wants no philosophers on that point.
Choose
Ask the question you are not supposed to ask, of what the business was.
Say nothing, and watch your sister's face across the candles.
Drink your uncle's health and give the dead subject its dinner off.